Aurora
by LadyAbyssal
Summary: Money, fame, respect, power. She had it all. …It wasn't enough. (Semi-SI as Lucy Heartfilia, AU)
1. 1-1 Emergence

**LadyAbyssal presents...**

* * *

 **Aurora**

* * *

 **1.1 Emergence**

* * *

 **"Mama?"** I ask. A nervous finger flicks a strand of golden hair behind an ear, and my eyes flit from the Caelish rug to my baby shoes. "What are those?"

"These are Gate Keys, sweetheart," comes the easy reply. I look up, see the smile on Mother's lips, and look back down with a blush. She is the epitome of a Victorian lady, all regal beauty and soft grace, but the affection in her blue eyes- "They're Mama's Magic. She can ask friends from a wondrous world if they would like to come and help her."

"Woah..." A memory – a two-dimensional, animated figure, with three 'Spirits' kneeling before her. Could it be…? No. It couldn't possibly. "What do they look like?"

"Would you like Mama to show you one?" At my shy nod, Mother laughs warmly. There is a rustling of metal and cloth, a flare of white light, and then- I look up.

The room- it isn't a room. In my previous life, I have never been in an indoors space so large. There was the gymnasium-cum-cafeteria, back in grade school, but- that hadn't been a room, either. A forum, maybe. Or a chamber. A room? No.

Tall, Greek _("Caelish,"_ a voice whispers, _"There is no Greece, anymore.")_ pillars hold up the starry sky, a massive, domed construct of stained glass and painted constellations. A royal blue rug stretches from one side of the forum to the other, and, on top of it, a sinfully soft king-sized bed. Mother lays on it, staring up at the glass sky above her.

I notice none of this, because there is a beautiful mermaid swimming through the air. Her blue-white hair is long and soft, her scales sparkle in the dim light, and her eyes fill with warmth. She holds a delicately sculpted vase and wears a tiara of spun gold, and she is magic.

I remember her. I remember watching her on a computer screen, raising tidal waves and drowning Dark wizards with righteous rage twisting her fair features. I remember her admonishing a blonde-haired mage for being single and alone, but always being there to help regardless. I remember her being strong, and wise, and caring, and _magic –_ and not real.

"So pretty," I breathe. Half is truth, because surely such beauty is impossible to attain, but the other half is carefully affected – product of an older mind, a more cunning mind, which wants this bearer of might and magic to protect me against the enemies in the night. Deceitful, perhaps, but I feel no guilt. "Are you my sister?"

Aquarius melts. "If you want me to be." She smiles down at me, glances to her Summoner, and vanishes in a haze of vapor and magic. My heart constricts. I wanted her to stay longer.

"Mama?" I shuffle slightly, my eyes falling back down to my feet. Strange. I was never so shy, before- "Will I ever see her, again?"

"Of course, sweetheart," she says. Mother raises a hand in silent comfort, and I scuttle over and onto the bed. She pulls me close. "Mama isn't as strong as she used to be, is all. She needs her rest. How about, when you turn twelve, she gives you her Key?"

"Mm!" I smile and nod and giggle, but, inside, my heart twists and breaks. Because, if Aquarius is the same as from my memories, than so is Mother; and she won't live long enough to celebrate my twelfth birthday.

She'll gather eleven of the Zodiac Gate Keys, and, with her life force substituting for the twelfth, will open the Eclipse Gate. She'll be responsible for bringing the Dragon Slayers forward through time, a plan concocted by her ancestor, Anna Heartfilia, the fire dragon Igneel, and Zeref himself. The loss of life force will give her Magic Deficiency Disease, because she couldn't find… Aquarius'… Key…

"…I love you, Mama," I say. What else could I do?

Somehow, I get the feeling that I'm not going to be the only thing different from what I remember.

* * *

 **1.1 Emergence**

* * *

 **It's** been six years since I was born.

It's been six years since I died.

I don't remember how it happened. Some nights, when the world is quiet and I feel so very alone, I can't help but be thankful. Morbid curiosity demands I know, but then I recall flashes of sterile white walls and the tick, tock, ticking of a clock and all I can do is scream into a pillow and cry. I want to remember and I don't want to remember and I wish I was Lucy, just Lucy, and didn't flinch every time I looked into a mirror, because _that isn't me, my eyes are greengreen_ _ **green**_ _and my hair is_ _ **blackblack**_ _ **black**_ _who is this it isn't me it can't be me-_

In. Out. In. Out.

…I was never so high-strung, before. When I learned that I was born with a genetic disorder, my face was stone and my heart, ice. I screamed and cried and panicked, but, later, when I was home alone and there was nobody around to hear. I didn't break so easily, not from mere thoughts and not in public. Never in public.

"Mm, Miss? Where can I find the books on magic?"

"Take a left and follow it straight, dear. They're just past the political section."

The Heartfilia Library isn't technically a public place. Closed to all but close allies of the Heartfilia Konzern, the massive theater of texts, ancient and new alike, dwarf every library I have been to in my previous life. Considering I spent _years_ just browsing the aisles, reveling in the silence and the smell of ink-on-paper, I can consider myself an expert on the matter. Had someone shown me this place in a dream, told me it was real and called it the famed Library of Alexandria, I would have believed them.

I will not suffer a breakdown here. I never have in a library before and I won't start now.

It takes three minutes of walking to pass through the political aisle and reach the 'magic' section. When I arrive, I bite down on my tongue and swallow a crass remark. Father's prejudice shines through, even in a library he has never stepped in.

There are no more than thirty books, each more fit for the 'history' section. There's _Caelish Wizard-Kings of the Pre-Cataclysm Age,_ there's _How Ancient Magic Becomes Lost,_ there's even _The Tale of Verana the Virtuous,_ as if fairy tales deserve to be placed here. The suppression of information, even in a private library, fills me with a righteous fury.

I flip through _Molding Magic: Architecture in the Modern Age_ and force back a scowl. Worthless. I don't give a damn about Fiore's version of the Taj Mahal, not even if it was built in a day. I want to _learn_ how to _cast magic_ myself, not read all about _other people_ casting magic. It is horribly childish of me, but I am a horribly childish person. All children are.

It takes all of ten minutes reading _The Tale of Verana the Virtuous_ with a pout twisting my lips for Mother to find me.

"Sweetheart," she says, her voice as soft as the silken sundress she wears. She kneels down next to me, pressing her floppy hat to her thighs. "What are you doing, down here?"

"I want to learn magic," I say petulantly. I widen my eyes and allow shiny tears to gather. "I want to be a wizard like you, Mama."

Mother attempts an appeal to rationality. "But if you become a wizard," she says, "Then who will lead the Konzern, in the future?"

"But you're so young, Mama." Attempt failed, Mother. My eyes widen further. "Don't I have time?"

"I suppose." One look into my chocolate brown eyes and she melts. Silver linings to reincarnation, silver linings. "I'll hire a magic tutor, sweetheart. But, only so long as you get good grades. If your other tutors come to me, then…"

"I understand, Mama." If I fail a six-year-old's classes, I _deserve_ that punishment. "I'll be good."

"You're always good, Lucy." She presses a kiss to my forehead. "How about we get some ice cream?"

"Mm!"

* * *

 **1.1 Emergence**

* * *

 **Every** day at nine o'clock, I meet with 'Old Crone' Odelia for my general education course. Mathematics, Fiorean Language and Literature, Natural Philosophy, Art, and History of Fiore. One a day, for _three whole hours._ Even with a fifteen minute 'recess,' that's ridiculous.

I'm a six-year-old merchant's daughter, not Plato's vaunted Philosopher King. Are all rich people raised this way? That's horrible. Respect, rich people. Respect.

Odelia is, nice, I suppose. She's the quintessential angry math teacher, who, after sixty years of crushing her student's weak excuses, sees inadequacy around every corner. She demands perfection with every stroke of my pen. But she's polite about it, has a plastic container of melt-in-my-mouth blueberry cookies for whenever I ace an assignment, and there is obvious fondness in her eyes. I can't help but like her.

After a short lunch, two hours are devoted to dance. Miss Ria is far less strict than Odelia. She's young and kind and warm, and acts more like a fun girl-next-door babysitter than an upper-class dance instructor. Time flies in Miss Ria's care, though a part of me wishes it didn't.

The next two hours are spent in quiet contemplation in father's office – that is, I sit and watch an old man fill out paperwork. For two hours. Every day. I can't even doze off, because he likes to spontaneously ask me questions about the Konzern. If he asks me _one more time_ to list off the names and wages of every manager we have, I'm going to burn his Manor to the ground. While he's still in it.

It didn't take me long to decide to fake ignorance on everything I'm taught. I don't falsify my intelligence and comprehension, though, leading to me being 'outed' as a child prodigy. I don't do this out of a lack of trust; I simply don't want father to up the stakes on my education and responsibilities more than he already has.

If he realizes that he could give me _even more work,_ he would. As it is, Mother is already holding him back from giving me a Statistics and Economics tutor on top of all my other work.

To be fair, I'm not against that. This mind is quicker and cleverer than my old one, and I want to use it to its fullest potential. I had been aiming for a journalism degree in my past life. I'll never get that degree, now, but the desire for higher learning is still there. Why _shouldn't_ I take on another class, especially in a subject I'm unfamiliar with?

Magic, mostly. Magic is a pretty good reason for a lot of things. Learning how to barter like the merchant's daughter I am would be cool, but learning how to throw fireballs like a wizard is even cooler. If I start studying economics, I won't have the time to study magic. That's unassailable logic, right there.

Not that I'm learning Fire Magic. I'm not learning Celestial Spirit Magic, either.

"Yo," my magic tutor introduces himself. Sleek black suit, check. Spiky orange hair, check. Cool dark eyes, check. He turns and winks at a passing maid. Check. "My name is Leo. I'm going to teach you how to crush snitches, find riches, and get bitches. And then I'm going to show you how to do it all over again, with _style."_

He preens, ruffling his mane of hair and smirking to himself.

"Your mother press-ganged me into teaching you Regulus Magic. Shame, then, that only I can use Regulus Magic. Why? Because I'm awesome like that. But I can teach you the next best thing. It's called _Radiance Magic."_

Leo is… different, than I expected. A moment's thought gives me the answer: this is before he risks his life to save Aries from that Blue Pegasus chick, what's-her-face with the beautiful green hair, and gets excommunicated from the Spirit World. That must have mellowed him out a fair bit, like a less extreme Sirius Black Effect.

"C'mon, midget Layla, we got magic to learn." He leads me out of the Manor and into a small, out-of-the-way courtyard. It is soothing and peaceful, a garden glade ringed by water fountains and koi ponds, with high trees filtering the sunlight. It can't be any later than two o'clock, but the air is chilly enough and the glade dark enough to be seven.

"How do we start?" I ask, when he relaxes against a fountain and seems happy enough to sit and watch the fish. He hums but doesn't say anything in response. "…Mister Leo?"

"Sorry, kid," he says. "I can't hear you over the magic barrier I trapped you in."

"Magic barri- _eek!"_ A shimmering, white-gold barrier manifests all around me. I jerk backwards gracelessly, but only collide against that very same hardlight field- it curves and slopes, surrounding me on all sides. "Leo!"

I see his mouth move but can't hear any words. He smirks for a moment before noticing the incomprehension on my face and flushing. He reaches into a coat pocket and pulls out a miniature notebook. A minute later, he rises to his feet and presses a torn-off sheet of paper against the barrier.

 _It's a Hardlight Rune_ , it says, followed by an arrow pointing downwards. In between my ankles, I can see a sharply glowing symbol, what appears to be a cross between an 'H' and two 'J's, etched into a black stone. When I look back up, the note has been replaced with another, which reads, _Fill with magic_ _dispels._

…Now if only I knew how to pump something full of magic. It's a shame that I don't have a _magic teacher_ who could _teach me_ how to _use magic._

The Spirit is soon joined by a pair of maids, each carrying a platter full of delicious-looking seafood. Salmon, mostly, with a pair of buttered crab cakes, a slice of tilapia, even mashed potatoes. Leo thanks them, flirts with the prettier one, than happily begins eating his lunch.

I stare at him balefully. When he finishes, he notices me looking, and shrugs. He presses a third note against the barrier a minute later.

 _Meditate, maybe?_ it reads. _I dunno._

"…You suck."

He lets me out six hours later.

"I thought Boss Lady said you were some kinda child prodigy," he immediately insults. "You figure everything out real quick-like, and remember it all perfectly. Smartest child in Fiore. The future of the Konzern. Twice the intellect she's ever had. I could go on."

 _I was mostly cheating,_ I want to say. I also want to say, _I had actual teachers for those subjects._ I say neither, and continue to stare at him balefully.

"Well, I get paid by the hour, so whatever. Meet me back here tomorrow." He turns and vanishes in a ray of sunlight. I make strangling motions at his back.


	2. 1-2 Emergence

**LadyAbyssal presents…**

* * *

 **Aurora**

* * *

 **1.2 Emergence**

* * *

 **"Come** here, love," Mother says, voice warm. That same warmth floods my cheeks, and I try and fail to hide the evidence with long bangs the color of sunlight. "Mama has a present for you."

I can't help myself - I look up at her kneeling form, chocolate brown eyes glittering with hope. We had already opened my birthday presents, books and jewelry and certificates around a long table and surrounded by the mercantile elite, and it had felt just so distant and impersonal-

I had been gifted more wealth in a single morning than in nineteen years of another life, another world, but I couldn't help but feel like I was left wanting. No toys, no mementos of happy memories, no humor beyond stilted boardroom jokes and inside gags revolving around words I can't understand, and, worst of all, _no magic._

…Of course, Mother wouldn't breathe the word around Father. But, here in the Star Room, as I had taken to call it, surrounded only by painted constellations and happy memories and mutual love and understanding… maybe, just maybe… "Can I really…?"

"Really," she says back, eyes crinkling, and in that moment I love her more than I've loved anything else Before.

Blink, and she'd miss it; I cross the room with all the speed of the birthday girl I am. One moment I'm following the arc of Regulus, spinning idly through the observatory, and the next I've spontaneously evolved flight and have flung myself onto her soft-as-sin bed.

"Here," she says softly, patting her lap. A moment later I'm feeling the curve of her jaw resting on the top of my head and the warmth of her arms coiling around my own, and I wonder - is that what a lost puzzle piece feels like, when it finally completes the picture?

Gift or no gift, this is the greatest present I've received all day… no… all my life.

"Her name is Vulpecula," she says, and presses something warm and thrumming into my hands. I can feel her - her joy, her trust, her hopes and dreams and passions. Beyond it all, I feel… I feel… "Do you remember her?"

"The…" I swallow roughly, and begin to shake. "The little fox."

"Mm." Mother hums for a long moment. "You're seven, now. Almost a grown-up," she teases, but her voice is low and serious. "And I think it's time for you to learn about responsibility - and love. Vulpecula was born only three months ago, as the Spirits measure things; she is young, still, in need of guidance and care. I'm trusting you to give that to her, Lucy. Don't let me down."

 _Breathe, Lucy. Breathe._

There's something burning, deep inside me. I feel like I've swallowed a dragon whole, and it's raging and breathing flame and shaking me from the inside out. This feeling… I don't-

"I won't, Mother."

* * *

 **1.2 Emergence**

* * *

 **Three** weeks. It takes me three weeks to evoke my magic.

I don't do anything impressive with it, either. There's no flare of dazzling light, no chorus of heavenly angels, no blaring of golden trumpets. All there is, is a weakly flickering globe of whiteness no larger than an eye, hovering just above my palm.

My body stills and my breath catches all the same, however. A sudden tension grips the air and weighs it down, and I feel like Atlas with the sky on my shoulders, but it's not a _bad_ feeling. It's almost-but-not-quite adrenaline, something parallel and **other,** and it's coursing through almost-but-not-quite veins and pounding to the staccato tune set by my almost-but-not-quite heart.

Fuck it, I'm not a poet. I can't describe the magic as anything other than that, magic. I could certainly try, though. I could wax rhapsodic about being a fairy in the winter court, weaving moonlight into a shawl with a song on my lips. I could cry for hours and bottle my tears, selling them to a traveler in exchange for a story. I could.. I could…

…That's magic, right? Like in the old stories only told around campfires or in the deepest, darkest depths of a college's history track. Where men are more than men, women are more than women, and anyone could be a god walking the earth in disguise. I'm one of them now, capable of doing things a six year old girl should not be able to do. One day, I could call forth hurricanes, knock over mountains, and reign over entire countries, if I only tried hard enough. I'm _magic._

…Right?

Then why do I feel so… _so…_

I turn my hand over, cupping the light-that-is-not-light. It shimmers and burns and seeps between my fingers, like a handful of molten lava, but there's something deep, deep inside of me that _knows_ my own magic would never harm me. Curling wisps ooze between the cracks in my fist, rising on imaginary thermals, and I'm caught between giggling at the tickling sensation and sighing at how… how… _something_ it all seems.

Still, I press my hand against the rune-stone at my feet, and the hardlight barrier dissolves into so much radiance.

There's another hour left in my daily tutoring session with Leo, but I don't think I can look at his face right now.

I turn and leave.

Immaculately tiled hallways evaporate beneath my feet. Servants call out to me, their words unheard, their worried glances and concerned questions gone unheeded. The heavenly vineyard and court's garden glow with the essence of life, the scent of grape and earth and magic and the radiant warmth of spring thick in the air, but my eyes are glazed, unseeing. For the first time in my entire life, I track mud and dirt from the gardens into the manor, and I don't so much as notice.

The next thing I know, I'm standing in the center of my bedroom, and I can't remember how I got there.

The room is very… me, I suppose. No less than two dozen pillows decorate the floor, blurring the line from fuzzy carpet to cloud-soft mattress sunken into the ground. A pale imitation of the Star Room's moving constellations are painted on the walls and ceiling, expanding nebulae splashing warm reds and greens and blues across the sea of blackness, speckled as it is with glittering white stars. A stuffed blizzardvern easily larger than myself lounges in the far corner, the tag still wrapped around its wrist, celebrating a victorious game of ring toss at the Harmonia Fair - and the only memory of this life I have outside of the Heartfilia Estate.

On any other day, the mere act of walking into this room will fill me to overflowing with soothing calmness. This is not any other day.

But, I made a promise. I have learned to summon forth my inner magic, and now there is nothing holding me back from meeting my new friend.

"Ready or not, here I come," I sing under my breath, kneeling on the floor. Close my eyes, in, out, in, and- _"I call upon thee, in the world of the Celestial Spirits! I beckon you to my side, at once! Pass through the Gate!"_

There was a flare of light, and-

-Nothing happened.

I wilted _. Did I do it wrong?_ I could feel my magic go, so it's not that. I'm absolute positive that's what Lucy said when she first summoned Canis Minor, having watched the first season enough times to outright quote pivotal lines like that.

But- I'm not really Lucy, am I? I'm someone else. Similar, sure, practically identical for all that the _real_ Lucy Heartfilia never existed in the first place, but not the _same._ My chant should be unique, too, something I could truly call my own. Something… _me._

I look around at my bedroom, an idea coming to mind. Yeah… yeah, I can do that.

 _"Hear my call, you who lives in the world of the Celestial Spirits! With these two hands I open the Gate… pass through, and come to my side! Vulpecula!"_ I pause, stricken with sudden hesitation. _"You know… if you want to, and all."_

Light bathes the room in silver radiance; an image passes before my eyes, of burning crimson and nine wrathful tails, and the sound of mocking laughter rings in my ears. There's a heavy drumbeat pounding beneath my skin - _rat-tat-tat, rat-tat-tat_ \- and my fear is a physical thing, thick and heavy in the back of my throat.

Still, I smile, and manage to speak through the veil. "Impressive," I say aloud. "You're really good at that, you know?"

The illusion falls a moment later, and I think that Vulpecula was pleased with my compliment - but as I look down at the tiny fox curled in a ball on the feather pillow I summoned her on, I realize that she just fell asleep.

I breathe a sigh, but it's born of fondness, not irritation. "A two-second illusion on a seven-year-old girl exhausted you to the point of sleep, huh? I guess you won't be slaying dragons any time soon."

Not that I mind; if I have to face dragons at all, anytime in the next seventeen years, then I'd be royally screwed regardless of Vulpecula's best efforts.

"We still have a contract to make, but…" There's something soft in my gaze, something reserved only for children and small animals and the most beloved, trusted of family. Vulpecula is all three, or soon will be. "I suppose it can wait. Just five minutes, though, okay? I have to get to dinner."

I curl up around her, and fall asleep in moments.

I never did get to dinner.

…

But, when I woke up to the coming of the dawn, I felt like I made the right choice. My heart felt lighter and the future, brighter. I won't be facing it alone, after all.

(I'll never be alone again.)

* * *

 **1.2 Emergence**

* * *

 **I** don't show up for my next session with Leo, or the next, or the next. I don't think he cares. I don't think I do, either.

Whenever I see Mother, whether for dinner or in the observatory or just for a quick hug during my morning recess, I make sure to smile and laugh and not breathe a word of my rule-breaking. Leo doesn't, either. I'm not sure why this surprises me; so long as Mother never finds out, he continues to get paid for lounging around eating grapes off of our serving maids' fingertips or whatever it is he does while I meditate in a golden cage.

During some of my darker moments this past month, when hours of fruitless searching lead me to thinking that I didn't have any magic at all, I'd find myself hoping that Leo's key would make its sorry way into Karen's hands sooner rather than later. It's horrible of me. After that first day, he always let me out within two hours, or stuck passages from magical training manuals to the barrier, or even attempted a pep talk when he saw me losing hope. He was… not the best, but I'd had worse at my old university.

Still, I couldn't help but take out my darker feelings on his stupid, smug face. He just made it so _easy._ After every day of failure, I would look up at him and see the designer shades that covered his eyes and the comb he was running through his perfect hair and just… _lose it._

Maybe he didn't notice. Even fighting down rage, I've never been the kind of girl to let other people see me in anything but tip-top form. There's the playful anger I display when my dance instructor snags one of the cookies Odelia leaves behind after class, and that's fine, but then there's _real_ anger. After dad - not Father, but _dad,_ who may as well have died with me all those years ago…

Some people can pull of rage rather well. There's Erza, who looks like a wrathful goddess when she's angry, all righteous vengeance and shackled iron. There's Natsu, a protective dragon who would burn down the world for his friends. There's even Aquarius, sweet, sweet Aquarius, who had looked like an oncoming hurricane when she saw me nearly trip and fall off the roof of Heartfilia Manor after I retreated from a particularly frustrating session with Leo.

I'm not any of them. My anger isn't the righteous kind that only surfaces when there is a wrong to be righted. It is petty, and spiteful, and horrible on all the wrong levels. It rises up my throat like bile and out my mouth in a piercing scream, made all the worse because it only comes when I know I'm wrong and don't want to admit it.

…That's it, isn't it?

I look at the calendar staked to my bedroom wall. Not at the day, or the month, or even the picture of a fuzzy blizzardvern above it.

 _X774,_ it reads.

But all I see is, _two years until Erza escapes the Tower of Heaven._

And I finally, _finally_ realize what I felt when I finally called forth my magic. Images had flashed before my eyes, distorted memories of sun-glare on a television screen, and a little red-haired girl screaming in agony and raising her hands and pushing away a half-dozen swords with a wave of invisible force-

-and I understand.

Erza called forth her magic fighting against cultists in the heart of a slaver base. And here I am, wearing a sundress made of such fine silk I could feed a family of four off the mark-down price, stalking through a manor the size of the White House in the center of a trophy garden larger than a small city, being given an education fit for kings by servants I don't appreciate.

What I felt wasn't accomplishment. I had wanted it to be, but it wasn't, not really. It was guilt.

"Stupid," I mutter. "What do I have to be guilty about?"

It's like the poor, third-world countries of Earth I had heard so much about in my last life. 'Donate now, feed a family of four!' If I had deposited my latest paycheck, I could have helped save lives… but I never did. A new book in my favorite series came out, or the latest album from that rock band, and I just- I just never thought about it. Not _really._

This, though? This is different. Not in that most fundamental of ways, where people help other people out of kindness and goodness and beauty and all that stuff my old Philosophy professor liked to talk about. I had an emotional connection to Erza and Jellal and Simon and Millianna and Sho and everyone else at the Tower of Heaven, but it was weak and shallow. It was a connection born of entertainment, of watching them conquer mountains for twenty minutes a week until the episode concluded and I went back to my life.

But it is different in other ways. It is different in that I have a... a responsibility, don't I? I _know_ things, things no one else in the world can know. Knowledge is power, and power is what makes the world turn. With a whisper to the right ear and a letter to the right address, I could do anything.

…Surely, then, I could do this?

With a start, I realize that I have been standing in the center of my room and staring at a calendar on the wall for the past half hour. It doesn't change anything; I rush to my desk so fast, I nearly trip over the thick carpet. The first sheet of paper I retrieve from the bottom drawer is crumpled in my haste, and I have to force myself to calm down and take deep breaths lest I ruin another.

Eventually, I manage to put pen to paper and scrawl out an introduction in the fanciest calligraphy I can manage. Every one of Father's throwaway lines, Odelia's careful lessons, and Mother's gentle words of advice guides my hand as I move the pen oh-so-slowly down the page.

It takes me two hours to complete. By then, it is an elegant masterpiece I'd expect to find on the desk of a king. I tear it in half and start over anyway. It needs to be perfect, and no one can manage such a thing the first time around. I know that better than anyone.

When I'm finally done, dawn had risen and I'm staring down an entire trashcan of scrunched paper with bleary eyes. I feel like - honestly, I feel like shit. Pulling an all-nighter as a young adult to ace a Psychology test is one thing, doing the same as a small child to rescue even smaller children from vile slavers is another thing altogether.

That being said, I feel _good._ Really good. If I can pull this off, I'll be able to look back on this day and think, _See that, Lucy? That's a good thing. You've done good, girl._

(And, maybe, just maybe, this awful feeling in my throat will go away and never come back.)

I never thought I would say this, but my daily lessons under Father's heavy gaze is finally proving useful for something. Outside Father himself, there is no one in the entire world who knows more about Heartfilia Railways than myself. I know just about everything there is to know - who works where, which goes there, why this is like that.

Even more importantly, I know _names._

After all, how does the Queen rule her country? She doesn't have the strength of an army to protect her borders, or the multitasking capability of a corps of scribes to collect taxes. She can't mediate every lawsuit, catch every villain, farm every grain of rice.

No. What she _can_ do is order other people to do such things _for_ her. What does it matter if she can't fend off an entire invading force? She has soldiers to do that for her. Who cares that she can't catch every debtor to plot treason against the crown? She has a police force to do the grunt work instead.

In fact, all she has are three things - a voice, a nation, and the knowhow to use the former to be _given_ power by the latter. With that… well. She'd be the most powerful person in all the land, wouldn't she?

"Lala," I whisper to the tiny fox in my arms an hour later. She mewls back equally quietly. "Can you make me invisible? I only need five seconds."

I feel the splotch of white fur at the end of her tail rest against the curve of my neck, and a feeling like liquid lightning spreads across my body from the point of contact. I feel myself shiver at the alien sensation. Still, I hold on to enough determination to dash around the corner and into the servants' quarters.

A moment of desperate searching, some sleight of hand that I should be freaking praised for, and I'm lunging back around the corner four seconds later like a baseball veteran.

Well, maybe not a veteran. The illusion breaks a moment early when I skin my knees on the pearly tile. Still, I'm satisfied. I retreat to my bedroom with the air of a conquering queen, viciously satisfied, spinning an exhausted Vulpecula all the way.

(The black guilt in my heart was gone.)

…

Three hours later, the Heartfilia Konzern's official courier departed for Crocus with a messenger bag filled with letters. Unbeknownst to him, the one marked for the Magic Council was not from his stern, but loyal boss, but a small girl and her tiny friend.

Had he read it, which years of job experience had taught him to never do, he would have been struck by a feeling that he was remarkably out of his depth.

After all, it's not every day that the secrets of a slaver cult dedicated to resurrecting Zeref are passed into the hands of a lowly servant like him.

Still-

-He'd be grateful that the world has a figure like "Aurora" looking out for it.

* * *

 **1.2 Emergence**

* * *

 **The** next day, I showed up at the mockingly-titled Magic 101 with Professor Leo feeling light as a feather.

He promptly locked me in a hardlight barrier again, linked to _two_ rune stones.

Rumor has it, my scream of fury could be heard from Ishvar.

* * *

 _ **...**_

* * *

 _ **Author's Note:** A couple things, real quick. In case it wasn't clear, Lucy was feeling guilty because she knows about all these horrible things that are happening to people she 'cares for' - Gray and Deliora, Erza and the R-System, Natsu, Gajeel, and Wendy and the Dragons, Cana and Gildarts' abandonment, the Strauss' and their orphaning... pretty much everyone, actually... and there she is, living it up in Heartfilia Manor. It's not a rational guilt, but she feels it all the same, and she wanted to do something about it. In truth, it's less about helping people and more about helping herself - she doesn't want to feel so much guilt, anymore. That's not necessarily a bad thing... she has a lot of character development yet to go through before she can be a real hero._

 _As for what she did, with the letter? She basically sent a missive to Yajima, the short, bald guy on the Magic Council - you know, the only one to say 'No' to the Aetherion during the Tower of Heaven arc, and opened up a cookie shop afterward. Couriers for the financial 'elite' have a special drop-off point for correspondence with the government, which meant that letter will get past the usual screening methods to protect the Council from a flood of hoaxes. Yes, this means her letter is in a box clearly marked "Heartfilia." No, she really didn't think this through._

 _There is a method to Leo's madness, it just hasn't been revealed yet. Unfortunately for him, Lucy doesn't take well to being thought a pest. Her anger isn't entirely justified... he's doing what he can, after all - his magic is instinctive, innate, he's like Kakashi or Itachi in that he can't **teach** what he just, y'know, **instinctively knows.** It's like teaching someone to breathe or beat their hearts, to him. That being said, her anger isn't unjustified, either - she's six-on-seven and spends two hours a day sitting in a magic birdcage trying to set a rock on fire with her mind, with minimal instruction._

 _Vulpecula will age like a Spirit - that is to say, slowly. She'll never be more useful than, say, Happy, in that she has marginal utility use outside of combat or in rare instances inside of it, but is otherwise useless in a fight. As far as such things go, she's only a sliver more costly to summon than Plue, and her Spells draw on Lucy's own magic. She'll be absolutely adorable though, so it evens out._

 _Think Tuesdays are going to be my update days. We'll see how it goes._


End file.
